Harry Crews – a Southern IconI’m limited in my exposure to Harry Crews. I have read novels but not nearly enough. The Gospel Singer and Scar Tissue both appealed to me for different reasons. Harry Crews was an extreme writer and an extreme man. His mantra was honesty in all things. It is the reason that he valued sport so highly. The stats, said Harry, could not lie in sport.“There’s no bullshit. You think you’re faster than me? Fine. Let’s get a stop watch. Boom! We can find out. You can’t lie about that.”Crews was drawn to body building, wrestling and coaching both sports when he had stopped competing.His fiction was populated with desperate drinkers and single minded, conflicted thinkers. Whilst that in itself is nothing new, Crews had a style, a stance all his own. His no bullshit policy permeates his writing. The language is often tough, stark and bleak and yet it is often poetic and thoughtful. You get the very real impression that Harry had the fights, emptied the bottles, mistreated and was mistreated by life generally.But he wasn’t one to hide, look him up on You Tube. Watch the interviews, he can seem overtly arrogant and yet humble within the same clip.I discovered Harry Crews due to my passion for the writing of two other Southern State writers, Barry Hannah and Larry Brown.At some point, I will write a blog fully appreciating these two men, each of whom possessed the capability to make me wonder why in the hell I ever imagined I could be a writer.Tragically, I discovered Barry Hannah and Larry Brown posthumously; at least I was able to appreciate Harry Crews toward the end of his colourful life.